AP: Impact of Expanded Background Checks in CO 'Vastly Overestimated'

Just over one year after the implementation of expanded background checks in Colorado, the AP is reporting that the “projected impact” of the checks was “vastly overestimated.”

According to the AP, when Democrat lawmakers were crafting the expanded background check legislation, they “relied on information from a non-partisan research arm of the legislation that predicted about 420,000 new [background checks] over the first two years.” Because of this, a funding increase of $3 million was given to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation to handle the predicted surge in background checks.

But with the law in effect just over a year, “Colorado Bureau of Investigation officers have performed only about 13,600 reviews considered a result of the new law.”

Republicans are pointing to this to justify their claims that the law “they opposed from the start was an unnecessary attack on the rights of gun owners.”

State senator Greg Brophy (R-Dist. 1), responded to the overestimated figures by saying: “Nothing good came of the passage of the law, except we found out just how anti-gun Democrats in Colorado are.”